Page 100 of A Wicked Kind of Husband

“She was the mistress of…” He paused and continued hesitantly. “A friend of mine…He…It turns out that he…ah…he gave her my details before he died, and last month, she wrote to say she was unwell and needed money. So I called on her.”

He had hesitated. Joshua never hesitated.

“He must have been a very good friend,” she ventured.

His only response was to resume his pacing.

“You’re not telling me the full story.” She hauled herself up against the pillows. “There’s more. Who is she? Who was the man?”

With her eyes, she followed his prowling shadow. The silence grew and grew; it grew so thick that it squeezed her shoulders and choked up her throat and ate up all her air.

“No,” she whispered. “You’re lying.”

In two strides he was back on the bed. She curled into the pillows and realized he could not have lied when he had not spoken.

But she had heard him say it all the same. Papa.

Mama and Papa, flirting with each other on the night of Charlie’s twenty-first birthday, joking about how Charlie was “born early,” only eight months after their wedding, getting so bawdy that Miranda and Charlie fell to their knees and begged them to stop, but Mama and Papa only laughed and waltzed around the room.

Mama and Papa, the one sure thing in her world. They were so solid, so strong. Their family was built around them, and that’s why her family was strong. Why it would always endure. Why it was worth fighting for.

“No,” she said again. “Papa never had a mistress. Other men do, but not Papa. He was faithful to Mama. Always. They were devoted to each other. Why are you lying? You’re trying to cover for yourself, aren’t you? That’s why you’re lying.”

“It’s the truth, Cassandra.”

“I don’t care what you do.” How shrill she sounded! She hated that, hated him, hated them all. “But how dare you tell lies about my father. Our family…He would never…” Her breath failed her, taking her words along with it. “He would never.”

She fell back against the pillows, lips trembling. Briefly, he loomed over her, as if he might hold her; she hated him and longed for him to hold her close.

But he sat back and did not touch her at all.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I never meant to tell you.”

How he had scoffed, when she first boasted about her parents’ fidelity and devotion. He had already known then. Perhaps she had known too, and pretended to herself that she did not.

She hugged herself, as if that might hold her world together, but it had already fallen apart.

And it was still falling apart, faster and faster, Papa with his mistress, and Mama with her cordial, and Miranda with her silence, and Lucy with their grandmother, and Emily with her theater, and Joshua with his work, unraveling, unwinding, all of them spinning further and further away from each other, and in the end there would be nobody left, just silly, naive Cassandra, sitting alone in the dark.

What a fool she had been, trying to hold them together. It had been futile from the start.

“I want to meet her,” she said. “Will you take me to her?”

He would leave her, but not yet, not today. She wanted his weight on her, to keep her from floating away.

“If that’s what you want,” he said.

“It is.”

“Very well.”

“No, not really.”

“Very well.”

“No. Yes. I do. Really.”

“Very well.”

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